Case Number 10806

THE ARRANGEMENT

The Charge

If your wife insists you see it together, be careful.

Opening Statement

Despite being a star vehicle for Kirk Douglas and the piquant Faye Dunaway,
as well as one of legendary director Elia Kazan's last films, The
Arrangement has somehow managed to fall into obscurity. Now Warner Bros. is
giving it new life with its release on DVD.

Facts of the Case

Douglas (Spartacus) plays Eddie Anderson, a successful middle-aged
copywriter. One sunny morning, Eddie wakes up and attempts to kill himself on
the Los Angeles freeway. As Eddie's family, friends, and analysts try to discern
what could have driven him to suicide, he reflects on the talent he has
squandered in his career, as well as an affair with Gwen (Faye Dunaway,
Chinatown), a free-spirited co-worker, that quickly turned sour. In the
midst of this self-exploration, Eddie's father becomes gravely ill, his marriage
dissolves, and he discovers his former mistress had a baby that he may have
sired.

To put it succinctly, The Arrangement is a portrait of a mid-life
crises on steroids.

The Evidence

The Arrangement was released in 1969, the same year that an X-rated
film (Midnight Cowboy) won the Academy Award for Best Picture. It was the
beginning of a great period of filmmaking, in which mainstream movies first
began exploring sexuality and marital strife with a frankness and honesty that
was exhilarating and bleak at the same time. Additionally, experimentation and
unconventional storylines were beginning to receive wide acceptance (2001: A
Space Odyssey was released the prior year). Kazan had made his greatest
films in the 1950s and early 60s. In 1969 he hadn't made a film in six years.
The Arrangement is his ambitious attempt to explore middle-age ennui with
late-60s boldness, but the film ultimately proves both too ponderous and
self-consciously stylish for its own good.

The film, clocking in at a little over two hours, lacks the focus to ever
engage its audience. Eddie Anderson's problems are so varied -- dissatisfaction
with his job, his wife, his mistress, his father, his mother -- that the movie
almost seems like five films compressed into one. Actually, Eddie's relationship
with Gwen is so convoluted -- they alternately love and hate each other about
half a dozen times -- that there seems to be enough grist there alone for a
mini-series.

Initially, Eddie's loveless relationship with his wife Florence (Deborah
Kerr, The End of the Affair) makes for an intriguing domestic drama, but
we soon find ourselves transported back in time to his ill-fated love affair.
Later the affair is shunted aside to explore the vacuity of the advertising
trade. Suddenly, Eddie's senile father is gravely ill, and Eddie rushes across
the country to be at the old man's bedside. Eddie helps his father escape from
the hospital -- and suddenly learns that Gwen has given birth to a child that
may be his. Oh, and she loves him again. But wait -- now Florence wants to get
Eddie committed to a mental hospital? As if this weren't already confusing
enough, intermixed within these are flashbacks to earlier affairs, earlier
business meetings, and scenes of an unhappy childhood. It's enough to make a
viewer nauseous.

Then there is the problem with casting. Douglas and Dunaway are both capable
actors, but are just an odd match. At the time of filming Douglas was in his
early fifties, but could have passed for a man ten years older. Dunaway (hot off
Bonnie & Clyde and The Thomas Crown Affair) was in her
mid-20s, but her hair is oddly dyed gray. I assume this was done to make her
look older -- closer in age to Douglas. However, she still looks like a girl in
her mid-20s, just one with an inexplicable dye job. I suppose there's nothing
too unusual about a businessman having an affair with a woman 30 years his
junior, but this age difference still somehow infused the relationship with a
creepiness that I think was unintended. But the problems don't end there.

Over a three-year stretch in the early 1950s Kazan directed Marlon Brando in
A Streetcar Named Desire, Viva Zapata!, and On the
Waterfront. Kazan hoped to reunite with Brando for The Arrangement.
Unfortunately, Brando backed out of the film due to the despair he felt after
the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Obviously, we will never know what
The Arrangement could have been with Brando, but Eddie Anderson does bear
a striking resemblance to Paul in the classic Last Tango in Paris. While
Douglas provides star power, he simply cannot mine the same emotional depths as
the incomparable Brando. Kazan thought as much himself. In his autobiography,
Elia Kazan: A Life, he expressed dissatisfaction with Douglas's
performance. In a film like The Arrangement, so much depends upon the
expressiveness of the lead. No one has portrayed existential torture like
Brando; the best Douglas can provide is something akin to aggravated
middle-manager.

Unfortunately, Warner Bros. hasn't done a great job on the film's DVD
transfer. Some scenes were so grainy I wondered if they were outtakes spliced
back into the film. Additionally, the disc's only extras include a trailer and
"A New Lifestyle," a vintage featurette that seems to have been
produced for the movie's original release. It is slightly interesting to see how
films were promoted nearly 40 years ago, but there is little of substance
here.

The Rebuttal Witnesses

Though I am very critical of the film, Kazan is an unquestionably great
director (Splendor in the Grass is one of my all-time favorites movies),
and there is something intriguing about watching him struggle to adapt to a new
style of filmmaking and storytelling. Kazan makes bold choices, at different
times reversing the film, freezing characters so that Eddie can speak with them
(not unlike Zack's powers on Saved By the Bell), and even infuses a fight
scene with the POW! and BAM! title cards popularized in the
Batman series three years earlier. Yeah, the film ultimately doesn't
work, but anyone who admires Kazan's earlier movies should be interested in
watching The Arrangement.

Closing Statement

This film's plot most closely resembles Last Tango in Paris and
American Beauty. However, in quality, it fails to approach either of
those two far superior films.

The Verdict

Kazan is guilty of thinking Kirk Douglas would be an adequate replacement for
Marlon Brando.